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On Amazon's cyber monday Kindle deals there is A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O'Brian for $3 and Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian for the same price. I picked up A Sea of Words myself. I probably read Master and Commander two years ago, and while I did enjoy it the language was a struggle being inundated with naval jargon and it took me over a month to read. Reading this thread now and knowing that essential information I should know is explained to Dr. Maturin I know I'd still get flustered not knowing enough of all the terms. After watching the movie again recently and playing with the excellent naval battles in Assassin's Creed 3 I've got an itch to get back into these novels. I'm debating with myself whether to re-read Master and Commander or go straight to Post Captain, I'm leaning towards re-reading.
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Nov 26, 2012 18:34
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Really you can feel free to skim the nautical jargon. I have only the vaguest understanding of most of the maneuvers that happen with the ships, and it hasn't detracted from my enjoyment of the series in the least. I will try! Usually when I feel like I'm missing something in a novel I'll end up re-reading the same couple pages multiple times until my brain just shuts down and I go do something else  I will have to let Dr. Maturin be my guide 
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Nov 26, 2012 19:29
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PFCHudson posted:Can someone please confirm that the Kindle version of Sea of Words actually has 500 some odd pages and not the 15 that's shown on the page? Surely a misprint? My kindle copy says it has 214 "pages" and 8001 locations. Maybe that 15 pages is just a misprint for the sample of the book? That's a big difference from 500 pages but I'm not sure how Amazon decides how to divide up the text. I've only skimmed a bit since I've a bit of a backlog to get through until I get to the main series, but I don't see it missing anything. The few maps it has are pretty good for a kindle book, the text is small of course but not fuzzy and actually readable, and it has some pictures of the ship types of the time. My complaints so far would be that the list of illustrations in the beginning doesn't link to the actual illustrations like it should, and when you get to the A-Z lexicon, you can't skip between letters by the skip button, but I guess if/when I actually need to look something up I'd just use the search function anyways. Remember that when you buy a kindle book you have like 7 days to return it; you used to have to call customer service but now I think you can just go to the Manage My Kindle on the website, go to your books, find it and under the drop down menu for the book there will be an option to return it if you're within the deadline.
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Dec 17, 2012 20:41
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I have a question about something in the first novel, with the Cacafuego did the crew throw all that stuff into the water when the Sophie was getting right next to it to create a buffer? "...watching the hen coops, boxes and lumber tossing overboard from the frigate..." I just dont see how chicken coops and boxes wouldnt just be crushed as the ships came together. Picked up a lot more on this reread, already bought Post-Captain and hopefully I wont get distracted from reading it as much as my reread of Master and Commander did as I usually have the attention span of a gnat. "An ape on a rock no great way off threw a turd at him, quite unprovoked; and when he half rose in protest it shook its wizened fist and gibbered so furiously that he sank down again, so low were his spirits." Oh Jack
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Mar 21, 2013 03:17
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BananaNutkins posted:Unless I remember wrong, it was just a desperate and too late attempt to lighten the ship in order to gain distance from the Sophie. That does make sense with what the Sophie does later, thanks.
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Mar 21, 2013 06:20
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ItalicSquirrels posted:This. Don't have the book on me at the moment, but the quote from Jack is something like, "Do you know the great thing about fighting the Spanish, Mr. Ellis? They are never, never ready." Yea this is familiar. But these books. These books I tell you: "The carrier has brought you an ape." "What sort of an ape?" asked Stephen. "A damned ill-conditioned sort of an ape. It had a can of ale at every pot-house on the road, and it is reeling drunk. It has been offering itself to Babbington." 
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Mar 26, 2013 03:31
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Finished Post Captain, really enjoyed it. The bees, the BEES! And the bearsuit. So great. I liked the one part where those baliffs were trying to touch Jack with their staffs to arrest him and he had the sailors hold up some boards around him in a circle protect him while he went to the ship, and THEN impressing the brutes into service! Haha. It really helped reading it on the kindle, the dictionary had a lot more nautical terms than I'd guess and I also have A Sea of Words I'd switch to sometimes to search for a term and it worked out pretty well. I'll probably read a couple of other things that have been waiting for my attention before moving onto the next one, looking forward to it.
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Apr 8, 2013 15:50
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Finished #6 The Fortune of War, great novel. I looked up some of the events like the battle with the Constitution in the novel and appreciate how much O'Brien can weave Jack & Stephen into historical events without making them front and center. I can get really involved into what I'm reading and I kept putting down the novel when the french agents were trying for Maturin - it was pretty harrowing. His casual coup de grâce of Pontet-Canet with his surgical knife after hitting him over the head, christ! It was good seeing the spy side of him, a stark contrast to the bumbling doctor on the ship. I went through #5 & #6 at a good speed, I'll read a couple other things before going back to this series, but I think I've enjoyed these last couple novels more than the ones before. This time I didn't have to look up nautical terms nearly as much as I had with the previous novels  Also I've been re-watching the Horatio Hornblower tv mini-series (movies?), makes me really wish there was something comparable with the Aubrey-Maturin novels. It scratches that itch though, and looking up youtube videos someone actually posted it all online if anyone here is interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKa05Liidqg
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Aug 26, 2013 02:57
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PatMarshall posted:Yeah, the movie was great, but it would be nice to have a miniseries like Hornblower (which rules, btw). Because of the film that's how I picture Aubrey & Maturin in my mind, as Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany; though where I'm at, a heavier Russel Crowe.
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Aug 26, 2013 17:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The same reason Aubrey and Sam Panda never actually explicitly call each other father or son. It's bastardy, in the 18th century. On top of that, Stephen is the sort of person who keeps secrets and speaks cautiously even when there's no real reason to, just out of habit and practice. If they both know it, why say it? If this turns out to be a major spoiler I'm going to be pretty disappointed! Would've rather had not read it if it is
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Sep 19, 2013 03:59
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I don't know when they did it, but the Amazon ebook of Master and Commander is down to $1.99 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006C3Q6GG Other than this first one, all my other Aubrey/Maturin novels has been ebook purchases and the quality has been good, which isn't always the case for an older novel in ebook form. Picked this up for my someday re-read. EDIT: kinda wish there was a general deals thread to post this in (used to be one in Coupons & Deals but it died), I'm going to buy it for a friend or two that may enjoy these novels. PlushCow fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Feb 1, 2014 |
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Feb 1, 2014 02:08
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I enjoyed and recommend Cochrane by David Cordingly (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00422LERA/) and agree that Six Frigates is great as well. I'm only up to #10 of O'Brian's novels but I've found that reading nonfiction of the time is nearly as interesting and often as exciting as the novels, as we all know O'Brien bases much on real-life occurrences and Thomas Cochrane's exploits make for fascinating reading.Prolonged Priapism posted:Six Frigates rocks because at one point it just straight up quotes The Fortune of War while describing the HMS Java / USS Constitution battle. It's also a very good read otherwise. It's pretty funny how often these nonfiction books reference O'Brien's novels as inspiration for writing said book, or as in Six Frigates about the novel having a nearly accurate description of the battle. I recently finished Commander: The Life and Exploits of Britain's Greatest Frigate Captain by Stephen Taylor about Edward Pellew, it was good as well. I think that so much of the papers and personal correspondence surviving from that time really helps flesh out the history in depth - whereas I read Cordingly's Under the Black Flag about the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean and it wasn't as detailed and in-depth as I would've liked, and mostly because I think the source documents are lacking. Navy officers would write personal letters, fill in logbooks, have a diary, etc etc, but pirates sure didn't bother for the most part and most of what we know is from the people who fought them, tried them in court, or got robbed by them.
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Apr 18, 2014 02:12
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At the end of book 11, The Reverse of the Medal, when Jack is being put into the pillory and the whole square is taken up with sailors and officers (who've kicked out all others, haha), at risk to their commissions/careers, taking off their hats and cheering Jack made me a bit teary-eyed reading it  Rarely can a novel do that to me. Considering the reveal to Stephen at the end about Wray I don't know if I can stop myself from going right onto the next book instead of reading something in-between as I have been.
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Jun 4, 2014 06:19
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Nettle Soup posted:Just started reading the first book, I think I'm missing about 50% of it as I gloss over words I don't entirely understand, and it's taking a while to get used to the weird style, but it's pretty good so far! Good advice given in this thread(cant remember/find who said it) that helped me out was that anything O'Brian thinks you need to know will be explained to Maturin, so glossing over the unfamiliar jargon is just fine. I had a lot of trouble on my first read of Master & Commander, and re-read it a year later with this in mind and enjoyed it a great deal more and have been going through the novels since (on book 14 now). Colonial Air Force posted:
This I second. You can find a lot with a google search but the book is very extensive. The ebook version is alright - it's not easy to go back and forth between the diagrams and their labels, but for the lexicon often you can use the search function to find a word so it works well enough most often, but sometimes I'd wish I'd bought the paper version because flipping would sometimes be faster if a word I searched for is referenced much throughout. I recently finished The Wooden World by N.A.M. Rodger , covering a multitute of facets of the British Navy mid-18th century. Though it's not about the British navy at the same time period as the novels, there's still much that is the same. Much of the focus was how the Admiralty, and officers in general, wanted stable, if not happy, communities on the ships; the quality of food in the day and how sailors often ate better than most of the people on shore; leave was granted often back then(this was before coppering ships greatly extended sailing time), even at the known cost of a few desertions; the rate of desertion going nearly to zero the longer someone served on a ship, even if pressed. It goes into jobs, like the purser and how awful it was financially speaking, such as pursers had to have their own funds, and bought certain supplies on the market but were only reimbursed at standard rates set by the Victualling Office/Admiralty which could easily result in a loss. Details into the Impress Service, how it was often more than just grabbing sailors and landsmen (landsmen being rivermen, not actual random people off the street that never were on any kind of a ship or boat in their life) with recruiting as well. There's a good chunk of the book about the interest (patronage) system, of officers cultivating a following and following someone who can advance them. That's one thing we read about a lot in the novels. It's a general information book, so if anyone's interested check out the table of contents on the Amazon preview to see what the author covers.
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Aug 8, 2014 20:53
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193468/The-Master-Commander-revealed-The-real-Captain-Jack-Aubrey-service.html I read Taylor's book about Pellew a while ago and thought it was pretty good, but the author clearly has a bit of hero worship going on that can be too ingratiating at times. He's not wrong though; there's a lot about Jack's character that feels strongly based on Pellew, not least of all his physical aspects, so to speak, growing fat as he aged but still maintained his great strength and ability to climb up the shrouds as fast as the young sailors on his ships. The book I read on Cochrane was this one https://www.amazon.com/Cochrane-David-Cordingly-ebook/dp/B00422LERA , which was very good, highly recommended. His exploits like the fight of the Speedy vs Cacafuego are great to read about, and the deplorable proceedings of the Stock Exchange Fraud trial.
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Aug 9, 2014 17:39
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bollig posted:Hey so, while I am not completely prepared to break my 'one book by an author a year' rule, I was thinking that maybe I could read a non-fiction book pertaining to the age of sail. I see the recommendation of A Sea of Words, but is that something I can kind of just sit down and read? Or is that more of a reference book? The little I see on the preview on Amazon makes it look like a pretty decent read. Your rule is silly. What if you die, huh? What then guy? There's not a moment to lose, not a moment. I would recommend Cochrane by David Cordingly. A biography of a man whose life, his trials and triumphs, heavily influenced characters and events in the novels. Very engrossing. I also enjoyed The Wooden World by N.A.M. Rodger, about the Royal Navy circa the Seven Years War. It's not exactly the navy we read about in the novels, but there's much that's the same, so if you ever wanted to learn about food, discipline, the Impress Service, what a Purser does, etc etc, it's good. You can check out the table of contents on the amazon preview to see if it's for you. There is a big section to A Sea of Words that isn't just a dictionary of jargon and references, so it's good to pick up and read a bit of and then use when you're reading a novel.
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Sep 16, 2014 04:42
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Wikipedia has helped me out a lot in explaining basic terms and the like, things such as "West by south" is not actually an old way of saying southwest, or points of sail, so on and so forth. If wikipedia doesn't help, a google search, and for many things a google image search, has worked out well. Also I think it's worthwhile to pick up http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Words-Third-Edition-Companion/dp/0805066152 , its got loads of information and diagrams, and a whole dictionary just for these novels. I've found it to be a great help, and have used it constantly throughout the series. The ebook version is decent, you can often use the ereader's search function to find a specific term, but the diagrams aren't formatted well on the ereader screen. I have the paperback version as well, and prefer it. I finished #20 Blue at the Mizzen this last weekend, and what a joy it has been reading these novels, off and on, for a couple years. I read the first one around 2010 after seeing the movie, and it was a huge struggle: my complete ignorance of anything to do with sailing was a huge hindrance to overcoming the wall of nautical jargon of these novels, as I felt the need to know every little thing that was being said and so didn't continue the series when I was finished. Then in 2012 I stumbled onto this thread and some good advice was given early on that anything you need to know in these novels will be explained to Maturin, who knows nothing about ships and sailing himself, and I dove in again re-reading Master and Commander. O'Brian's characterization is top-notch, the development of the friendship of these two opposites Aubrey & Maturin was lovely to read, all the little things O'Brian builds up, their successes & failures, foibles, etc etc. I particularly liked how though Jack & Stephen are exceptional, they don't always succeed, and how crushed I could feel with them when they got knocked around and low. What great novels, I can't say it enough. I am reading 21, though incomplete and unpolished it is still worth reading I think, though in my mind the series ends well with Blue at the Mizzen . PlushCow fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 19:29
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EDIT: ^^^ Bugger my pardon, you say! I wonder at it, I truly do, you fat-arsed swab. Let us say pistols for two, coffee for one, ha ha!Murgos posted:
In which it is what the shrouds are attached to on the side of the hull, begging your pardon.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chains_(nautical) PlushCow fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Nov 11, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 20:32
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We know what Babbington is all about!
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Jul 21, 2015 01:25
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ovenboy posted:I'm trying to branch out some and read other books for a little while, since it's not reasonable to immediately re-read the whole thing. Definately looking forward to some Austen, which is a feeling I never considered I might be feeling. I recently finished a book that was recommended in this thread, Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, about his time on a merchant ship from Boston to California for two years in 1834. It was very good, very readable, and worth your time. It really helped being familiar with the nautical jargon from the O'Brien novels and gives a good look at life of a regular sailor. Also it's free! http://www.amazon.com/Years-Before-Mast-Richard-Henry-ebook/dp/B0082XP72S
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Sep 24, 2015 16:42
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I noticed that David Cordingly's Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander ebook is on sale on the US Amazon for $2, http://www.amazon.com/Cochrane-Master-Commander-David-Cordingly-ebook/dp/B00422LERA I read it a couple years ago and it was very good, and interesting to see just how much of an influence the real life of Cochrane has in O'Brian's novels of events and the character of Jack Aubrey. The ebook is under Amazon's holiday deals so no idea how long it would last, I wouldn't wait to pick it up.
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Dec 14, 2015 18:08
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I'll admit that this game is the reason for my sudden interest in age-of-sail fiction and why I asked about the Bolitho novels. If ebooks are your thing, Amazon has had the Master and Commander ebook for $1 for awhile now: http://www.amazon.com/Master-Commander-Aubrey-Maturin-Novels-ebook/dp/B006C3Q6GG The best advice for the novels I got in this thread was not to get bogged down in the nautical jargon if you don't understand it, it's alright not to understand it all, because anything the author believes you really should know will get explained to a character (mostly the doctor Maturin) who knows nothing about sailing.
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Jan 20, 2016 18:42
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And thanks for the words about them, I'll ask my dad to pack em up and send them to me. I might just go to the library/book store and get Master and Commander first though.
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I read Sharpe's Tiger and enjoyed it, but the ebook edition is probably one of the most typo ridden ebooks, not to mention all the formatting errors, I've ever come across: I haven't bothered continuing the series. I imagine they just OCR'd it and never had anyone proofread before pushing it out. Conversely the Aubrey/Maturin ebooks are very good, with very few errors - there were a few times I thought I caught a typo, only to discover it was some obscure word choice by OBrian.
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Feb 10, 2016 02:16
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Fire Safety Doug posted:Visited the Royal Maritime Museum in London on Friday, really enjoyed the whole thing but especially the Nelson, Navy, Nation exhibition. Can put up a few photos of the displays if there’s interest. Please post 'em!
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Oct 2, 2017 01:03
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Fire Safety Doug posted:(pictures) Great pictures, thanks for posting them. Those uniforms look like they're in pretty decent condition, and I thought the cat would've had thicker strands.
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Oct 3, 2017 03:00
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Arcsquad12 posted:So my brother has been getting into the Hornblower series and the Aubrey-Maturin books. I don't know which copies he has so I don't want to grab one for him. Instead, I want to ask you guys if you have any recommendations for books on Thomas Cochrane, the real life captain that Jack Aubrey takes inspiration from. I know a bit about Cochrane and his crazy exploits, but if you guys know any good biographies or history books about him I could get for my brother I'd appreciate it. I read this one about Cochrane and enjoyed it, but idk where you could find a physical copy https://www.amazon.com/Cochrane-Master-Commander-David-Cordingly-ebook/dp/B00422LERA This is probably the same book https://www.bookdepository.com/Cochrane-the-Dauntless-David-Cordingly/9780747585459?ref=grid-view&qid=1509202824409&sr=1-1 The Lord Bude posted:Wheel of time was 14 books, each of them as long as a couple of Aubrey-maturin books. It was also definitely not trash; although the final 3 that were written by Brandon Sanderson definitely didn't have the same prose writing quality as the rest. The Aubrey/Maturin novels always felt really dense to me, giving them a level of attention that I wouldn't necessarily give to a fantasy novel that I may find myself skimming some parts.
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Oct 28, 2017 16:06
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Instead of being productive I have spent some time going through old Patrick O'Brian newsletters from his publisher, each one has a short piece from O'Brian himself and some of you may enjoy it as I have: http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/pobnews.htm
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Feb 7, 2018 20:10
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Lockback posted:Truelove is a good one, I like the books that dive more into the personal dynamics of a ships crew. Don't bother with The Unfinished Voyage. It's only a few chapters and not worth the full price of a novel. It's nice to know, and comforting in a way, that Jack and Stephen's adventures together would continue after Blue at the Mizzen. As you say Blue at the Mizzen was an excellent end to the series. Unfinished Voyage has some scanned pages of O'Brian's own handwriting and it's neat to see how for a dinner party scene he had drawn out the table and who was sitting where. If you're interested you can get a hint of where O'Brian was going, in the Amazon preview of the novel, that it was going to be influenced by Thomas Cochrane's service in Chile and the independence of Peru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_Dundonald#Chilean_Navy
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Feb 28, 2018 22:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think a lot of Post Captain is a deliberate Austen homage; there's basically two types of historical fiction set in the Regency era, wooden-ships-iron-men stuff for dudes and Austen-derived "regency romance" for the ladies, and I think O'Brian was trying to bridge the gap. I tried reading P&P because of this thread but stopped a bit after 1/3rd of the way through; I think my brain needs a bit of action and danger in a novel to keep it going. I did find P&P witty and clever and, because of O'Brian I think, pretty accessible and plan to give it another go someday. If I'd tried to read P&P before getting totally absorbed by O'Brian I don't think I would've made it past the first few pages.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:43
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Colonial Air Force posted:What about the dangers of a bad marriage or ~*~GASP~*~ dying unmarried!?  VVVVV Ha ha! PlushCow fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 22:33
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Fire Safety Doug posted:Yep. Someone might have said that O'Brian himself had suffered some tough losses around the time he wrote that book? His wife died earlier in the year that novel was published. Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's when you just restart over again the beginning. I like this a lot. I finished the series almost exactly 4 years ago but I think about the novels all the time, and am looking forward to when I start a re-read of the series (soon!).
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Nov 2, 2018 01:28
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Phenotype posted:Pudding This is awesome! Looks super good. I did not expect the suet to be like that.
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Nov 4, 2018 00:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I was in Baltimore recently and managed to do an early-morning scout through the U.S. S. Constellation and took a bunch of photos. They might be of interest to those in this thread: Great pictures! Is that the captain’s dining cabin near the end? Did anything of particular stand out or surprise you?
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Jul 31, 2019 03:18
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I've started a long-delayed re-read, and I have the impression that for a series just brimming with jargon, M&C uses some that I don't think is common in most of the novels, like t'garns'l instead of t'gallant sail/topgallant sails, but it has been years since I finished the last novel so my memory may be failing. There's been a few other terms but now I can't find them. I get stuck on stuff, and something that's been messing with my brain is the commands for turning the ship's wheel vs how the ship actually turns. I thought the commands for steering a ship at this time period, like "port your helm", "hard to port", are Tiller oriented, not Rudder oriented, and the wheel turns one way the tiller points to the opposite, the rudder goes the same way as the wheel. Meaning for those examples: you are turning the wheel to starboard -> the tiller is going to port -> rudder turns to starboard -> ship turns starboard. On an ebook edition, but page 10 when talking about the Sophie's previous captain "invariably tacked by suddenly putting his helm hard -a - lee": My brain: Wheel turns to windward -> tiller goes to lee -> Rudder turns to windward -> ship turns and tacks through wind. Later page 134, during convoy duty the Sophie has "come up into the wind" for gunnery practice, and it's noticed one of the convoy is being boarded, Jack shouts " 'Port your helm.' ... the Sophie paid off. Now the wind was on her port beam: a few moments later she was right before it, and in still another moment she steadied on her course, with the wind three points on her starboard quarter." : My brain: Ship pointing into the wind, wheel is turned to starboard -> tiller points to port -> rudder goes to starboard -> ship turns to starboard, with wind now on the port side, and continues turning. Usually easy to look this stuff up, but the animation accompanying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_wheel#Mechanism looks to me like the front view is correct and the overhead view is wrong and it has short-circuited my brain. The text supports how I thought it worked. Am I right or have I made a conceptual blunder?
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Oct 7, 2019 22:36
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Continuing on my re-read of the first novel, there was a line I really liked after Stephen directs Jack where some fresh water may be had off the coast of Spain, and was allowed to stay ashore for a night to visit a "friend" (really just wanted some solitude from the human press of ship life), and subsequently they had to leave Stephen stranded for days, and Jack is worried. There's a passage where Jack is thinking to himself that the ship needed at least two more midshipmen – an oldster and a youngster – if someone before the mast would do to be raised – someone with experience than a youth with money – etc etc and his thoughts are broken with with an elips "...If the Spainards caught Stephen Maturin they would shoot him for a spy." That concern that breaks through his thoughts for his friend worked really well for me. A more humorous part I enjoyed was after a good great gun exercise that Jack tells Stephen about when they are in the captain's cabin afterwards, and Stephen is less than interested: "I am happy you are pleased; and certainly the mariners seemed to ply their pieces with a wonderful dexterity; but you must allow me to inist that that note is not A." "Ain't it?" cried Jack anxiously. "Is this better?" Ha ha! PlushCow fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Oct 11, 2019 |
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Oct 11, 2019 22:53
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Got a way through Post-Captain on my re-read the past few days, and one line I remembered and enjoyed was this part where Stephen is visiting Sophie, and asks about her family and a gentleman-caller: 'How is your mama, your sisters? May I ask after Mr. Bowles?' 'They are very well, thank you. As for him,' she said, with a flash of her eye, the calm grey growing fierce, 'I sent him about his business. He became impertinent - "Can it be that your affections are engaged elsewhere?" says he. "Yes, sir, they are," I replied. "Without your mother's consent?" he cried, and I desired him to leave the room at once. It was the boldest thing done this age.'
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Oct 31, 2019 18:31
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I'm on book 3 HMS Surprise in my re-read but some things from book 2 Post-Captain I enjoyed: When Stephen first arrives aboard the HMS Lively, with Jack as temporary captain: "...Stephen, by way of being amiable, said, 'What a splendid vessel, to be sure - vast spacious decks: one might almost imagine oneself aboard an Indiaman,' there was a wild shriek of childish laughter - a quickly smothered shriek, followed by a howl that vanished sobbing down the companion-ladder." And after Stephen arranges for Sophie and her sister to take a trip aboard the Lively and Jack endlessly adjusts the decorations and furnishings on the ship making the crew crazy, has to tell Stephen it's time to remove the bees he brought aboard: [Jack says] "By the bye, you will not object to the bees going ashore, just for a while?" "They did not go ashore for Mrs Miller. There were none of these tyrranical caprices for Mrs Miller, I believe. They are just growing used to their surroundings - they have started a queen-cell!'" "Brother, I insist. I should send my bees ashore for you, upon my sacred honor." I also picked up this fun children's book https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Biestys-Cross-Sections-Man-War/dp/146548471X A nice thing to share with my nieces and nephews when they graduate from Where's Waldo and they can help me find the hidden stowaway character and also learn about maggot infested ship's biscuit.
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Nov 15, 2019 21:18
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Kylaer posted:Tiny thing I have a question on. The phrase "fighting over a chest" is used several times in the series, and from context it's clearly some kind of non-lethal duel, but does anyone know what it actually means? The only thing I can think of is that it could be a fistfight with a chest set on the deck between the fighters, to keep them from getting really close to each other. Genghis Cohen posted:So, fighting over a chest is definitely just a punch-up with the opponents facing each other separated by a sea-chest. I'm not sure if they were standing/kneeling/seated, or secured in any way. But I gather it was partly to restrict their ability to fight (no kicking, limited grappling) to methods and effects which were considered acceptable. Also just for lack of space. You have to have this fight to settle a dispute in a small space, possibly without being noticed by your officers. So the two square up and get it done relatively quickly. In my funny cross-section book I noticed this:  The black line going to it was about "Gambling" on a ship, betting on dice or fights etc.
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Nov 18, 2019 19:01
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Finally finished my series re-read book 3, HMS Surprise. Lots of highs in this one (Jack and the sloth a favorite) and some real lows (the child Dil, Stephen granting her wishes, and the conclusion of that plotline got me teary-eyed again). Not to mention Stephen and Diana Jack trying to raise Stephen's spirits by showing him where he carved his initials (bracketed by a couple of manatees or beer-drinking mermaids) by the topmast head as a boy on the Surprise: 'Does not that raise your heart?' he asked. 'Why,' said Stephen, 'I am obliged to you for the sight of it, sure.' 'But it does raise your heart you know, whatever you may say,' said Jack. 'It raises it a hundred feet above the deck. Ha, ha – I can get out a good thing now and then, given time – oh ha, ha ha! You never smoked it – you was not aware of my motions.' When Jack was as amused as this, so intensely amused throughout his whole massive being, belly and all, with his scarlet face glorious and shining and his blue eyes darting mirth from their narrowed slits, it was impossible to resist. Stephen felt his mouth widen involuntarily, his diaphragm contract, and his breath beginning to come in short thick pants. Took me a long time to read this one as I got massively distracted by other things for weeks and weeks (thanks Total War Warhammer 2).
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Jan 20, 2020 22:41
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freebooter posted:On my first-time readthrough, up to The Reverse of The Medal, and you know what, is there anything illegal or immoral about insider trading if the tip-off is that the stock's going to rise, not crash? (I presume there will turn out to be more to it than this). Here's one of the real life influences on the novels and his involvement in the scandal that can probably explain it well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cochrane,_10th_Earl_of_Dundonald#Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud
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Jan 22, 2020 04:26
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